The Bluegrass and Beyond

In their new book, “The Embattled Wilderness,” Erik Reece and James Krupa write this: “To look out over the forest’s steep ridges — slopes that novelist James Still called ‘a river of earth’ — is to understand that Robinson Forest is simultaneously one of the most biologically diverse landscapes in North America and one of the most threatened.” Photos by Tom Eblen  

JACKSON — As we hike uphill through beech and yellow poplar trees, a wild turkey flies out of the woods and across the trail in front of us. A few hundred yards higher, Erik Reece stops suddenly and points at a scarlet tanager foraging among the oaks.

At the crest of the ridge, we climb an old fire tower and are rewarded with a spectacular view of Robinson Forest. On this clear, spring morning, the forest looks like a rolling “river of earth,” as James Still described the natural landscape of Eastern Kentucky in his classic 1940 novel, River of Earth.

The green waves roll out in every direction until they suddenly stop at Robinson Forest’s boundary. Beyond the boundary are huge, gray scars from surface mining and the flattened, denuded remnants of “reclaimed” coal-mine land, now struggling to support foreign grasses and scrubby trees.

“We hope more people will go to Robinson Forest, but a lot of Kentuckians won’t, so we wanted them to experience it vicariously,” said Reece, co-author with James J. Krupa of the new book,The Embattled Wilderness: The Natural and Human History of Robinson Forest and the Fight for Its Future (University of Georgia Press, $24.95).

Reece will sign copies of the book from 6 to 7:30 p.m. Friday at The Morris Book Shop, 882 E. High St.

Erik Reece on Lewis Fork creek in Robinson Forest.

Reece is a UK English professor best known for his award-winning 2006 book, Lost Mountain: Radical Strip Mining and the Devastation of Appalachia. Like Lost Mountain, this book has a forward by renowned Kentucky author Wendell Berry.

Krupa is a UK biology professor who over decades of study has explored every ridge and valley of the main 10,000-acre block of the 14,786-acre forest, which contains some of the state’s cleanest streams.

“It is one of the last and largest examples of the oldest, most biologically diverse ecosystem in North America — the mixed mesophytic,” the authors write in their introduction.

“Unfortunately, industrial development has churned under the mountains surrounding these 14,000 acres, turning Robinson Forest into an island of biological diversity surrounded by an ever-expanding desert,” they write, adding that there is every reason to believe that coal and timber interests want to plunder this land, too.

Reece and Krupa are both fine writers. In this small, engaging book, they alternate chapters, explaining the natural and human history of this unique corner of Breathitt, Perry and Knott counties and making a case to preserve it.

Krupa describes the geological history of Robinson Forest and the surrounding Cumberland Plateau, which was formed before there were dinosaurs, mammals or even flowering plants. These mountains were once covered by a shallow inland sea and then swamps. Dead ferns and trees sank to the bottom for thousands of years, forming peat and eventually bituminous coal.

Krupa also discusses his research into the ecological diversity of the current forest. Who knew lichens and wood rats could be so fascinating?

Reece’s chapters describe the forest’s human history, from settlement to the early 20th century, when Cincinnati business partners F.W. Mobray and E.O. Robinson bought the forest and cut virtually all of its timber.

In 1923, Robinson gave the wasted land to the University of Kentucky for research to “tend to the betterment of the people of the mountain region of Kentucky.” Under UK’s stewardship, most of the land has regenerated over the past 90 years into a second-growth version of the biologically diverse, native forest.

But coal operators, who wield considerable clout, have periodically pressured UK to allow mining in the forest. Reece said he and Krupa decided to write this book after the UK Board of Trustees’ controversial 2007 decision to clear-cut 800 acres of the main forest.

Although the forest recovered from clear-cutting a century ago, critics doubt that can happen again because of the extensive surface mining on surrounding land and the planting of invasive species as part of mine “reclamation.”

Reece said he and Krupa hope their book will prompt UK officials to rethink their management strategy for Robinson Forest and embrace a broader ecological research mission. A part of such a mission could be helping Kentucky adapt to climate change.

Specifically, the authors urge broader input into decision-making about the forest. Currently, Robinson Forest is managed by UK’s Forestry Department. Also, they want UK to separate research and revenue goals, so that there is not periodic temptation to log or mine Robinson Forest to make money for the university.

Reece is up for tenure this year, and he acknowledges this book won’t be popular in some corners of the university. But he thinks Robinson Forest is worth fighting to preserve.

He said the book was inspired by The Unforeseen Wilderness, which UK commissioned Berry to write in 1971. It advocated for preservation of the Red River Gorge at a time when the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers wanted to destroy it with a flood-control dam.

“We want to give readers a sense of why Robinson Forest is worth saving,” Reece said. “If you can convince people to love something, they won’t destroy it.”

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Excerpts from the final chapter of The Embattled Wilderness

“Robinson Forest is many things: it is one of the most important eco-systems in Appalachia, it is a laboratory for crucial research and teaching, and it is a gift held in trust for future generations of Kentuckians. But it is also a model for how we must proceed in our habitation of the natural world. In fact, Robinson Forest represents a model for an entirely new definition of “economy,” whereby our American systems of exchange, both of wealth and energy, are brought in line with the most important and inescapable economy of nature.”

“What we as 21st century Americans must finally come to understand is that the economy of consumption operates in direct opposition to, and at the peril of, the economy of nature. … Kentucky should look to Robinson Forest as a model for a sustainable, post-coal economy. We must replace the industrial logic of the strip mine with the much more ancient wisdom of the forest.”

“To abandon wilderness places like Robinson Forest would be to abandon ourselves. To ignore the natural laws of its watersheds for the logic of our own industrial imagination would be to abandon our better selves — to abandon a sustainable future for the sake of short-term avarice and indulgence. But to preserve the world will mean learning the lessons of Robinson Forest, and in doing so learning to preserve that embattled wilderness.”

I have been bicycling in the countryside for fun and exercise for nearly two decades. One of my New Year’s resolutions for 2013 was to make most of my short, in-town trips by bicycle once spring arrived.

Spring arrived last Wednesday. Despite below-freezing temperatures in the morning and a cold afternoon wind, two trips downtown and one to the University of Kentucky campus went well. Since then, it has snowed. And snowed.

Oh well, one of these days the weather will catch up to the calendar. When it does, more Kentuckians will be looking to bicycles as a means of transportation, an enjoyable form of exercise and even a vehicle for economic development.

To jump-start those efforts, the Kentucky Rails to Trails Council and several other organizations are planning the first Kentucky Walk Bike Summit, April 11 and 12 at the Capital Plaza Hotel in Frankfort.

The summit was modeled after the Lexington Bike Summit that Mayor Jim Newberry’s administration helped put together in 2007. It gave momentum to several Lexington efforts, including new bike lanes and the highly popular Legacy Trail.

Bill Gorton, a Lexington lawyer who is chairman of the state Bicycle and Bikeways Commission, said the goal of the summit is to share stories and strategies about successful projects around the state with people in other communities who want to do their own.

“We want to create a place where people get together and meet other people and share the stories about how they made these things happen,” Gorton said. “We’re hoping some of the smaller communities will work with the Transportation Cabinet and other sources of funding and say, ‘You know what, we can do that!’”

Among an extensive list of speakers and panelists are Lt. Gov. Jerry Abramson, a cyclist who as Louisville mayor began a 100-mile trail around the city; Transportation Cabinet Secretary Mike Hancock; David Adkisson, president of the Kentucky Chamber of Commerce; Andy Clarke, president of the League of American Bicyclists; and representatives of state cycling groups and the Federal Highway Administration.

Gorton said the Transportation Cabinet has become more supportive of bike lanes and trails, such as the one connecting Lexington and Wilmore that was built along old U.S. 68 when the road was widened several years ago.

“It took the engineer in the district to say, ‘Hey, we can do that,’” Gorton said. “But these things need continued attention and advocacy.”

In addition to making existing roads safer for cyclists, Gorton said recreational trails can become important economic development assets. They are a part of the Beshear administration’s focus on “adventure tourism.”

One such effort involves converting abandoned rail lines into trails. Kentucky has only about 30 miles of those trails scattered around the state, and most are short. The most ambitious project now under way is the Dawkins Line, which would be a 36-mile trail in Breathitt, Johnson and Magoffin counties.

“There’s lots to see and experience in rural Kentucky, and by creating a destination like that, it can serve as the nucleus of other tourist activities,” Gorton said. “If you could link these with Kentucky State Parks, which are some of the best in the nation, there are great opportunities. You’ve got to have people see the potential.”

For more information and to register for the Kentucky Walk Bike Summit, go to Kywalkbikesummit.com.

I see the tourism potential for road cycling in Central Kentucky every Memorial Day weekend, when I run a rest stop at the annual Horsey Hundred ride. The Bluegrass Cycling Club, of which I am a member, has sponsored the two-day recreational ride for 35 years.

The Horsey Hundred is two days of supported rides of between 26 and 100 miles. The event attracts about 2,000 participants each year. I have met people at the Horsey who came from across North America, including a big group of Canadians who spend more than a week each year riding our back roads (and spending money at our hotels, restaurants and stores).

The Bluegrass Cycling Club makes money on the Horsey and gives most of it away to bicycle-related philanthropic projects in Central Kentucky. Grants are in the $2,000 to $4,000 range. For more information about applying, go to Bgcycling.org. The application deadline for this funding cycle is May 15.

Surely by then the snow will be gone.

A rendering for Scape/Landscape Architecture’s plan for Town Branch Commons, showing how it might look west of Rupp Arena. Images provided.

Kate Orff, whose New York landscape architecture firm was chosen last week to design Town Branch Commons, has made a name for herself by looking below the surface and beyond the conventional.

The approach served her well with Lexington’s Downtown Development Authority, which hopes to create green space through the center of the city along the path of the long-buried Town Branch Creek.

Orff said in an interview that her team figured out quickly that the key to this project wasn’t recreating the stream as it used to be, but working with the complex limestone geology and hydrology beneath Lexington’s streets and structures.

She also realized that Town Branch Commons should do more than create beautiful public space to attract people and private development. It should play an important role in solving Lexington’s persistent storm-water and water pollution problems.

In addition to being a partner in the firm Scape/Landscape Architecture, Orff is an assistant professor of architecture and urban design at Columbia University. As founder and co-director of the university’s Urban Landscape Lab, she leads seminars on integrating earth sciences into urban design and planning.

With Town Branch Commons, Orff said she saw an opportunity to accomplish goals that are often seen as contradictory: increasing commercial development and sustainably improving the environment.

“This Lexington project is an amazing opportunity for me to try to bring those two realms together,” Orff said. “I really think that’s the future, this concept of green infrastructure.”

Orff said green infrastructure has many advantages: It is less costly to build and maintain than concrete and pipes. It is less prone to massive failure, because it is less centralized. And it provides the side benefit of public green space.

“But you have to think very systematically,” she said. “It requires more, frankly, of the urban space. It’s more of a dispersed strategy of touching the water where it lands at multiple points in multiple ways. But a more dispersed model leaves you more room for resiliency.”

Orff, 41, grew up in Maryland and earned a bachelor’s degree in political and social thought from the University of Virginia, then a master’s degree in landscape architecture from Harvard University.

She started Scape/Landscape Architecture in 2004. The firm’s projects have ranged from a 1,000-square-foot park in Brooklyn, N.Y., to a 1,000-acre landfill regeneration project in Dublin, Ireland.

Orff has made several national lists of up-and-coming designers. Last year, the organization United States Artists chose her as one of 50 American artists to receive $50,000 fellowship awards.

She was co-author, along with photographer Richard Misrach, of the 2012 book Petrochemical America, which created an ecological atlas of the petrochemical industry’s effects on the 150-mile Mississippi River corridor between Baton Rouge and New Orleans known as “Cancer Alley.”

Currently, Orff’s firm is doing projects in New York, New Jersey, Chicago and Greenville, S.C., where she is working on an environmental education center with Jeanne Gang, the Chicago architect and MacArthur “genius” award winner who did the site plan for the proposed CentrePointe development in Lexington.

Perhaps Orff’s most high-profile effort is a proposal to restore the Gowanus and Red Hook sections of New York harbor with a system of designed oyster beds. Before harbor dredging and industrialization, oysters flourished there. One oyster has the ability to cleanse 50 gallons of water per day. (She explains the project in a TED talk online. Watch it at the end of this post.)

Her “Oystertecture” plan, which will begin with a pilot project in March, has attracted a lot more attention since superstorm Sandy showed the vulnerability of the Northeast’s urban coast. Orff is part of a task force New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg appointed to study those issues.

To prepare her Lexington proposal, Orff said she studied water flow data and made floodplain maps to understand downtown’s hydrology and geology. For local knowledge and engineering expertise, she engaged Lexington-based EHI Consultants and Sherwood Design Engineers, a major national firm.

Orff also met with city officials to understand Lexington’s consent decree with the Environmental Protection Agency, which will require millions of dollars in fixes for long-ignored water quality problems throughout Fayette County.

“Before we ever started to design, we did a very comprehensive series of maps that included flooding, the SSO (sanitary sewer overflow) events and so on,” Orff said. “We had a very clear sense of how water was moving and the amounts of water and what would be possible and what would not be possible.”

Orff said her team also tried to work with what already existed or was proposed for downtown “rather than tearing down and starting over from scratch, because clearly a lot of money has been spent already.”

Orff plans to return to Lexington in a few weeks to meet with stakeholders and the public to gather feedback and ideas. Then, more civil engineering will be needed, as well as a plan for how to build the project in phases.

“We are aiming to refine the plan and provide some alternatives for different areas,” she said. “I think the way our scheme kind of fits within the landscape, it provides a lot of alternatives and backup plans.”

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Hardly a week goes by that people don’t tell me how they wish the open block where the Webb Companies hopes to build CentrePointe could become a public park instead.

As the block awaits redevelopment, it is planted in grass and surrounded by a plank fence to resemble a horse pasture. It has become a popular gathering place during downtown festivals. (At other times, it is off-limits, just as horse pastures are.)

CentrePasture’s popularity points to a couple of ironies about Lexington.

One is that we have a lot of open space, but little public space. The other is that we are surrounded by some of the world’s most beautiful rural landscapes — an artful blend of the natural and man-made — but our central business district is a generic jungle of concrete and asphalt. There are only a handful of small parks or plazas downtown, and few trees of any size.

Although recent renovations of Triangle and Cheapside parks have been excellent, the comments I hear make me think Lexington residents still yearn for more public space downtown.

Town Branch Creek resurfaces west of Rupp Arena. Herald-Leader photo

The Downtown Development Authority on Monday will choose the winner of a design competition for Town Branch Commons — some form of linear park on city-owned property along the path of the long-buried stream that gave birth to Lexington.

This project would involve bringing parts of the creek back to the surface, either literally or symbolically, to create attractive public spaces for nature and a variety of activities. A jury of design professionals was to recommend a winner to the DDA board after closed-door presentations Friday by the five finalists.

The competition attracted 23 entries. The finalists are among the world’s best landscape architects and designers: Coen + Partners in Minneapolis; Denver-based Civitas; the Netherlands firm Inside Outside; Scape Landscape Architecture of New York; and Copenhagen-based Julien De Smedt Architects working with Balmori Associates of New York.

All five finalists’ designs will be on display at the Downtown Arts Center from Tuesday until Feb. 22, including during Gallery Hop on Feb. 15.

I can’t wait to see the designs, especially after hearing the finalists make presentations about their previous work Thursday at the Lexington Children’s Theatre. They showed amazing projects from all over the world, including in cities such as Bilbao, Spain, that had far more daunting problems than Lexington has.

(An interesting side note is that three of the six presenters were women: design legends Diana Balmori and Petra Blaisse and one of landscape architecture’s rising stars, Kate Orff.)

(Also worth mentioning: several of the landscape architects showed projects that used wetland parks to effectively solve storm-water problems. Lexington officials should remember that as they decide how to spend millions of dollars on storm water issues under terms of the federal consent decree.)

I can already hear Lexington’s naysayers: This whole idea is impractical, unaffordable and frivolous. It is none of that.

The compelling argument for Town Branch Commons is not esthetic, but economic. This sort of urban public space has been an effective way to attract people and investment dollars to cities of all sizes, from Seoul, South Korea to Yonkers, N.Y.

People who have attended recent Commerce Lexington trips have seen it work in Greenville, S.C., where a long-neglected riverbank became Falls Park; and in San Antonio, where a once-buried stream similar to Town Branch became the Riverwalk, now Texas’ second-largest tourist attraction after the Alamo.

New York’s High Line project turned an abandoned elevated rail line into a linear park that has transformed a once-decaying section of lower Manhattan. Despite huge cost overruns, the Millennium Park that Chicago built over an urban rail yard has more than paid for itself with the private development it has attracted.

The kind of public-private partnership envisioned with Town Branch Commons is under way in Atlanta, which is turning an abandoned rail line around the city into 1,300 acres of parks and 33 miles of trails, and in Louisville, which has raised more than $60 million in private money for the 21st Century Parks project that is creating 4,000 acres of linear parkland and 100 miles of trails around that city.

What excites me about the potential of Town Branch Commons was mentioned frequently by the world-class designers who submitted plans. This isn’t about building Disney World in a swamp; it is an authentic reflection of Lexington’s history, geography and culture.

Pioneers chose Town Branch as the site for their town, laying out Lexington’s grid according to the creek’s path rather than a compass. Its banks were where early Lexingtonians gathered for fun and refreshment before the stream was polluted, built over and eventually buried.

Town Branch Commons will require public money and even more private money. But it could be a great long-term investment, one that uses the authenticity of Lexington’s past to create both an amenity and economic generator for the future.

Three generations of the Stevens family: David, 15, Scott, 55, and David, then 82, at Philmont Scout Ranch last month. They backpacked for 10 days at high altitudes. Photo provided

David Stevens had never been backpacking before. But he skis and plays golf, so, he thought, how hard could it be?

Besides, he figured, it would be fun to accompany son Scott, 55, and grandson David, 15, on their 10-day backpacking trip to Philmont Scout Ranch in the mountains of northern New Mexico.

“I thought I was in shape,” said Stevens, 83, a retired physician and a former Lexington-Fayette Urban County Council member. “When I got there, I discovered that I wasn’t in as good shape as I thought.

“The uphill climbs were breathtaking, literally,” he said, and the backpack aggravated his sciatica, a nerve condition that can affect the lower back and legs. “It was pretty exhausting, but I made it.”

As of this summer, more than 1 million Boy Scouts and adult leaders have backpacked at Philmont since it opened in 1938. The 137,500-acre ranch has elevations ranging from 6,500 to 12,441 feet, making the air much thinner than in Lexington, at 978 feet above sea level.

Not many three-generation families take Philmont treks, said a ranch spokeswoman, Beverly Ponterio. Stevens wasn’t Philmont’s oldest backpacker, but those older than 75 rarely complete the entire 10-day hike of more than 50 miles, she said.

In a concession to age, Stevens didn’t join the others in hiking to the top of the two tallest peaks: Mount Phillips and the Tooth of Time, a bare rock that is the signature feature on Philmont’s landscape.

Stevens, immediate past president of the Boy Scouts’ 55-county Blue Grass Council, took the trip last month with 40 boys and adult leaders from the region. He was in one of two 10-member crews from Troop 73 at Centenary United Methodist Church. His group was led by Dan Miller, a Lexington lawyer.

Stevens admitted that he should have prepared by doing more than hiking a few miles with a loaded pack at Raven Run Nature Sanctuary and The Arboretum. “It’s not like hiking at The Arboretum,” he said.

Scott Stevens, a radiologist who keeps in shape by cycling, said, “He was fine on the flats and going downhill, but the hills were just all he could do. He had never been backpacking; he didn’t understand how hard it could be, going up those hills at that altitude.”

Scott Stevens hiked with his father while the pace was set by the boys and the fourth adult crew member, pediatric cardiologist Mark Vranickar.

“I was the second-slowest,” group leader Miller said. “I was glad Dr. Stevens was along so I wasn’t the slowest. Not many people his age could have done that trek. It was a challenge for all ages.”

Scott Stevens was impressed when three Scouts offered to carry some of his father’s gear during the toughest climbs. The boys might have hiked a little slower than they would have otherwise, he said, “but they learned something from this; they learned patience.”

After backpacking 4 to 8 miles each morning to the next camp, Scouts were taught new skills by Philmont staffers. They learned to fly fish, throw a tomahawk, shoot a black-powder rifle, climb a pole with boot spars and even milk a goat. They set up and broke camp, cooked all of their meals and cleaned up after themselves.

David Stevens was a Boy Scout while growing up in Louisville in the 1940s; his son was a Scout, too. They are proud of the younger David, a member of the Henry Clay High School golf team who is close to achieving Eagle Scout rank, something they didn’t do.

Stevens said a big reason he went to Philmont was to develop a deeper relationship with his grandson and “see what kind of person he really is.”

“He’s usually pretty quiet when our families get together,” Stevens said. “But he interacted well with his peers, spoke up. I found out that he’s not lazy. He’s good at making up his own mind.”

Stevens’ son and grandson also learned something about him.

“He’s very persistent; he doesn’t give up easily,” his grandson said. “There were times when I thought he wouldn’t make it, but he stuck it out to the very finish, and I thought that was just incredible.”

“I knew he was tough,” Scott Stevens said. “But I didn’t realize how tough he was.”

“I’m glad I went,” David Stevens said. “But I don’t believe I’m going back this year.”

Lexington's pedways include this one across Main Street. Photo by Tom Eblen

Designs for the stalled CentrePointe development have gone from bad to good for one reason: they must pass muster with the Courthouse Area Design Review Board.

When the hotel-retail- condo project was proposed in 2008, the board appointed by Mayor Jim Newberry to oversee the historic district let developer Dudley Webb do almost anything he wanted. But the board’s expectations have gotten much higher since Jim Gray became mayor 14 months ago.

The board meets March 28 to vote on what is supposed to be Webb’s final design. Based on board members’ comments at a preview Feb. 15 — and further improvements Webb’s architects made in response to that feedback — I expect the designs will be approved, except for one thing: the pedway.

When Webb and his brother, Donald, were remaking Lexington’s skyline with tall towers in the 1980s, they connected them with pedways, enclosed walkways through the sky that keep pedestrians out of the weather and off the street. The pedways provide access to Lexington Center, which includes Rupp Arena and convention facilities, from the Lexington Financial Center, Victorian Square, the Radisson, Triangle Center and the Central Bank building.

About two dozen North American cities built pedway and tunnel systems from the 1950s to the 1980s for people who didn’t want to venture outside on their trips from attached suburban garages to downtown offices and stores. Pedways were seen as safe havens against urban crime and decay, as well as amenities to help downtown retailers compete with suburban malls.

Like most urban planning ideas from the auto-centric second half of the 20th century, about the best thing you can say now about pedways is that they seemed like a good idea at the time.

Pedways might make some sense in harsh-weather cities such as Calgary, Alberta; Minneapolis, and Chicago. But cities below the frost belt have stopped building pedways — and even started tearing them down.

Since 2002, Cincinnati has been in the process of demolishing much of its pedway system. Officials didn’t like the way it limited healthy street life and cluttered the skyline, especially in such places as Fountain Square. They also could see big maintenance costs on the horizon as the pedways aged.

CentrePointe’s first three designs included two pedways, one spanning Upper Street to connect the development to the Lexington Financial Center parking garage. The other would have spanned South Limestone, going to a parking deck beneath Phoenix Park that no longer is planned.

CentrePointe was approved in late 2008 for tax-increment financing, or TIF, which means tax revenue generated by the development could be used to pay for “public” improvements needed to build the project. That included $3 million for the two pedways.

Webb is now proposing only the South Upper Street pedway, which would pass between two historic buildings across the street, the 1846 McAdams & Morford building and the circa 1860 building that houses McCarthy’s Bar and Failte Irish Imports.

When questioned by Courthouse Area Design Review Board member Kevin Atkins, a senior adviser to the mayor, Webb said the pedway was needed for easier access to parking and to provide a sheltered walkway between CentrePointe’s hotel and the convention center.

But Atkins wasn’t buying it, and neither were two others on the five-member board, chairman Mike Meuser and Michael Speaks, the dean of the University of Kentucky’s College of Design.

Speaks seemed especially annoyed by Webb’s suggestion that pedestrians might feel safer in a pedway than on the street. “I live downtown and it’s perfectly safe,” Speaks said. “Probably safer than the suburbs.”

CentrePointe’s redesign process has focused a lot on creating street-level pedestrian activity. The board is loathe to let Webb do anything that would detract from it.

It also seems reluctant to clutter the skyline between two historic buildings on Upper Street. EOP Architects has worked hard to keep that narrow block from becoming a service alley, and a pedway wouldn’t help.

Does the board think a pedway is worth more than $1 million in TIF “public improvements” money? I doubt it. Plus, there is the issue of future maintenance costs. Lexington has recently been hit with big bills for repairing and replacing aging parking garages. The pedways we already have aren’t getting any younger.

For all of those reasons, expect the review board to put its collective foot down and reject the CentrePointe pedway.

The street is named Short, but it is long on Lexington history.

I have been thinking about how this milelong street, which runs parallel to Main Street through downtown, ties together so many aspects of Lexington’s colorful and checkered past. I quickly came up with a dozen examples.

When I mentioned it to Jamie Millard, director of the Lexington History Museum, he quickly offered a dozen more. (The history museum, by the way, is on Short Street, in the old Fayette County Court House. It is worth a visit. More information: Lexingtonhistorymuseum.org.)

Maybe you will have a spare hour during the holidays, some nice weather and an urge to get out of the house for a walk. Clip this column and take a tour with me down Short Street.

Start on the west side, where Short Street begins at Newtown Pike. But first look behind you at the statue atop the 120-foot column rising out of Lexington Cemetery. It marks the grave of Lexington’s most famous citizen, early 19th-century statesman Henry Clay.

As you begin walking along Short through Lexington’s first suburb, you will see many homes Henry Clay would have seen. To your right, on the corner just across Old Georgetown Street, is the former home of Billy Klair, a colorful political boss in the early 1900s.

If you look beyond adjacent Klair Alley, you will see a gas station, the site of Belle Brezing’s childhood home. Brezing grew up to run a famous house of prostitution and is thought to have inspired the Belle Watling character in Gone With the Wind.

At Jefferson Street, you enter Lexington’s 1791 city limits. The next long block toward Broadway is filled with history. On your right, where First Baptist Church now stands, was the city’s original graveyard. It filled up quickly during the 1833 cholera epidemic.

William “King” Solomon, an alcoholic vagrant, became a local hero during that epidemic, risking his life to bury hundreds. After he died in 1854, the community saw to it that he was buried in Lexington Cemetery with an impressive monument. When you get home, search the Internet and read James Lane Allen’s fascinating 1891 story, King Solomon of Kentucky.

Farther along Short Street, you will pass two old homes on your left with a historical marker between them. They replaced two older ones where Mary Todd Lincoln was born in 1818 and where her grandmother, Elizabeth Parker, lived next door. (The future first lady moved to what is now the Mary Todd Lincoln House museum on Main Street when she was 14.)

When Abraham Lincoln visited his wife’s family in 1849, he got perhaps his most close-up view of the evil institution he would later take the lead in abolishing. There were slave jails across the street from the Todd and Parker homes and to their side facing Broadway. That side property is now occupied by three historic buildings: St. Paul Catholic Church, Sts. Peter & Paul School and Lexington Opera House.

The Short Street jail was Lexington’s most notorious because, from 1849 to 1856, it is where slave trader Lewis Robards kept what he called his “choice stock” — young mixed-race women he sold into sexual slavery.

In the block past Broadway, you will see the soon-to-close Metropol restaurant. It is housed in Lexington’s oldest surviving post office building, circa 1825. When you come to Mill Street, look to your right. The left side of Mill housed the shop of the great silversmith Asa Blanchard. Further on was the office of Cassius M. Clay’s 1840s abolitionist newspaper, The True American. It was an unpopular publication in slave-holding Lexington, so Clay guarded the door with a cannon.

The right side of Mill has the remaining half of a building that was a confectionery and ballroom operated by Mathurin Giron. The building now houses Silks Lounge. Giron’s upstairs ballroom played host to Lexington’s most prominent visitors in the early 1800s, including President James Monroe and the Marquis de Lafayette.

Cheapside was for many years the center of Lexington commerce, including outdoor slave auctions. Mary Todd Lincoln’s father had a store where Bluegrass Tavern is now. The old courthouse on the public square was Lexington’s fourth. Before that, in the 1780s, there was a log school, where the teacher was once attacked by a wildcat.

You might be tired of walking by now, but keep going for a few more blocks. You will come to the Deweese Street intersection, once the commercial hub of black Lexington. There you will find one of the city’s least-known historic buildings.

Now Central Christian Church’s child-care center, it was built in 1856 to house First African Baptist Church. It is an interesting piece of Italianate architecture, but what is most remarkable is that it was financed and built by slaves and free blacks.

The building was something of a monument to the church’s longtime minister, London Ferrill, who died two years before its completion. Under his leadership, the congregation grew to become Kentucky’s largest, black or white.

Ferrill was widely respected by both races. His funeral procession in 1854 was said to have been the largest Lexington had ever seen, save for one — that of Henry Clay two years earlier.

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As a boy in the late 1960s, Ken Silvestri worked weekends at his grandfather’s fruit stand outside the McCrory’s store on Main Street, where the Lexington Public Library now stands.

Shoppers were beginning to leave downtown for the new Turfland Mall and other suburban stores, “but there were still lots of people on the street,” he recalled.

Then, in 1971, Main and Vine streets became one-way thoroughfares to speed traffic through the city. Other downtown street pairs were converted to become one-way including Short and Second; Maxwell and High; and Limestone and Upper.

“After Main became a one-way street, the traffic was moving so fast it changed the complexion of the place,” Silvestri said. Fewer people walked by, and it was harder for drivers to stop to buy apples and oranges. Sales dwindled at his grandfather’s fruit stand. “After a while, he just closed it,” he said.

Many people now want to return those streets to two-way traffic. The Downtown Master Plan calls for it. The Urban County Council has endorsed it. Mayor Jim Gray has commissioned a study to assess the business, traffic and environmental impacts.

Although Gray favors the switch, he wants a big-picture review and solid data before making any decisions, Scott Shapiro, a senior adviser to the mayor, said in a presentation Thursday to The Lexington Forum.

That review should be completed within 12 to 18 months, Shapiro said. The state Transportation Cabinet must sign off on changes, he said, but state officials “have been great to work with so far and have been very encouraging.”

Many cities that created one-way streets downtown about the time Lexington did have switched back and been glad they did, Shapiro said. But every city and street is different. No matter what decisions are made, some people will complain.

“My experience,” said former council member David Stevens, “has been that we have 300,000 traffic engineers in Lexington, and they all think they know what is best.”

Here is the central question: Does Lexington want a downtown that is better to drive through or come to?

One-way streets do move traffic faster. Suburbanites who commute to downtown offices like that, as do people coming and going from the area’s big events. One-way streets can also be less problematic for emergency and delivery vehicles.

Warren Rogers, a construction executive who said he has looked at cities that switched one-way streets back to two-way traffic, said accidents rose. That makes sense: motor vehicles may be traveling slower, but they mix it up more with each other, as well as with pedestrians and cyclists. And there are simply more pedestrians and cyclists on two-way streets.

“It’s about priorities. Is our priority the car, or is it people?” said Renee Jackson, executive director of the Downtown Lexington Corp., which represents downtown businesses and property owners. “Two-way traffic really is better for business.”

Two-way traffic encourages more people to use sidewalks, businesses have more visual exposure and streets are easier to navigate, especially for tourists and newcomers. Added traffic flexibility can ease congestion by providing more alternative routes.

While the city’s big traffic study is a good idea, here’s the thing: traffic, like water, tends to naturally make its way around obstacles. That’s what happened recently when sidewalk improvements reduced traffic on Main Street and shut it off completely on South Limestone. Drivers adapted.

Downtown is coming back to life, and eliminating most or all of the one-way street pairs is an important next step to making the heart of Lexington more pleasant and prosperous.

Silvestri, the boy who worked at his grandfather’s fruit stand, grew up to be one of Lexington’s major commercial real estate brokers. He says eliminating the one-way streets downtown will be especially good for smaller, locally owned businesses. It will help create jobs and lower vacancy rates, which in turn will raise property values and tax revenues.

Many Lexingtonians will still prefer suburbia to downtown, and that’s fine. Silvestri lives near Hamburg Place, which he points out has its own vexing traffic issues. “But at least,” he said, “the streets over there are two-way.”

When Men’s Health magazine declared in June that Lexington is the nation’s most sedentary city, some people got angry. Others challenged the highly suspect data on which the ranking was based.

But local leaders and health advocates were thrilled. After all, what could be better motivation for changing the ugly truths behind that ranking?

“We know we’re not really the most sedentary city,” Mayor Jim Gray said. “But we also know we’re not the healthiest, either.”

Men’s Health’s slap at Lexington is a focus of this weekend’s Second Sunday celebration, which is likely to bring thousands of people to the CentrePointe meadow downtown from 2 to 6 p.m. Sunday. Festivities begin with a Sedentary Parade — that’s a parade that doesn’t move — and continue with a 5K race, a bike ride, a health fair and lots of opportunities for fun and exercise.

This is the fourth year for Second Sunday, a statewide effort in which almost all of Kentucky’s 120 counties close a prominent street and encourage residents to come outside and exercise.

Some communities, including Lexington, have expanded the program to monthly during good weather. For the second year, Blue Grass Airport closed its second runway on the second Sunday of June, and thousands came out to play on it. The airport plans to make it an annual event.

The Men’s Health ranking built support for Get Healthy Lexington, a partnership of local businesses that helps put together Second Sunday and similar initiatives.

So where do we go from here?

Jay McChord, an Urban County Council member and one of Second Sunday’s founders, has some ideas. “What if we gave Men’s Health a better story for next year?” he said. “What if Lexington became an inspiration for the entire country?”

McChord dreams of a follow-up story like this: America’s most sedentary city becomes a model of civic fitness. That attracts national attention and funding from private foundations to help Lexington build more infrastructure to make walking, biking and other physical activity a part of everyday life.

In many ways, America’s fitness landscape is ironic. On one hand, organized youth sports have never been more popular. Adult athletic events such as this weekend’s Bourbon Chase fill up only hours after registration opens. On the other hand, more Americans than ever before are overweight and out of shape, and they suffer from diseases that are the result of sedentary lifestyles.

It is easy to see how that happened. Adults drive more and walk less. They ride elevators and avoid stairs. Children play outside less and with video games more.

Because of safety concerns and suburban subdivision design, parents drive children everywhere rather than letting them walk or ride a bike.

McChord uses an economic analogy: We have the health “rich” and the health “poor,” but we have lost the large “middle class of health.” So how can we rebuild it?

As Lexington grows more dense to preserve farmland and limit the costly infrastructure of suburban sprawl, more attention must be paid to creating a less automobile-centric city, Gray said. That will give people more opportunities to incorporate physical activity into their everyday lives.

McChord said several national philanthropic foundations are giving hundreds of millions of dollars in grants to cities and organizations to help them accomplish significant policy changes that promote good health.

What policy changes could work in Lexington? McChord said city officials want to expand so-called joint-use agreements with schools and churches to make public and private athletic fields and playgrounds more available for everyone to use.

He said it also is important to change city development plans and building codes to encourage more physical activity. For example, McChord said, developers could get tax breaks for including bike racks or other facilities in their projects.

Painting more bicycle lanes on streets and building more multi-use trails are important steps. “The Legacy Trail opened up a lot of people’s eyes to what was possible,” McChord said. “We live in one of the most beautiful places in America. We’ve got to figure out more ways to enjoy it outside of a car.”

If you go

What: 2nd Sunday and Sedentary Parade. Non-moving “parade” kicks off afternoon of activities, health information and demonstrations; food and drinks available.

When: 2-6 p.m. Oct. 9.

Where: Robert F. Stephens Courthouse Plaza, CentrePointe lot and Phoenix Park, downtown Lexington.

Info: (859) 244-1944, Gethealthylexington.org. For activities in your county, go to 2ndsundayky.com.

Writer Frank X Walker was bothered last summer when he attended opening-day festivities for the Legacy Trail and saw only a few other people of color.

“I got to thinking about what I could do to change that,” said Walker, 50, who has ridden a bicycle since he was a child in Danville. Walker’s 73-year-old father is an avid cyclist, and his son rides a bike to classes at the University of Kentucky.

Walker had recently published Isaac Murphy: I Dedicate This Ride, a book of poems based on the life of the great 19th-century black jockey. Murphy’s home in Lexington’s East End neighborhood stood where the trail will begin when it is completed. That gave Walker an idea that many others in Lexington were quick to embrace.

They created the Isaac Murphy Bicycle Club, which organized classes this summer for children in the East End, teaching them bicycle skills, safety and rules of the road with donated second-hand bicycles.

The children also learned about the history of their neighborhood, where more than a century ago, Murphy and other black jockeys and trainers at the old Kentucky Association track helped make Lexington the horse capital of the world.

On Aug. 20, about 25 kids who attended at least two of the three classes this summer will be given new bicycles, helmets, locks, safety lights and water bottles at the YMCA on Loudon Avenue. Then they will all take a ride on the Legacy Trail.

“I remember as a kid how exhilarating it was to ride my first new bicycle,” Walker said. “I want other kids to feel that, too.”

The kids will be encouraged to continue participating in rides and other club activities — and to get their friends and families riding bikes, too. “This might be a way to get people in this part of town walking and riding the Legacy Trail,” Walker said.

The club has received money and volunteer support from many Lexington organizations, including the Urban County Council, the city’s Partners for Youth program, the Bluegrass Cycling Club, the Blue Grass Community Foundation, Dick’s Sporting Goods, the Broke Spoke Community Bicycle Shop, the Police Activities League, the William Wells Brown Neighborhood Association, Seedleaf and the East Seventh Street Center.

“We’ve been collaborating with as many parties as we can find,” Walker said, adding that the club could still use more donations and sponsorships.

The Blue Grass Community Foundation’s Steve Austin, who earlier worked with the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation’s Legacy Project, which helped the city build the trail, said, “I want the kids of the East End, like kids anywhere in the city, to feel like it’s their trail, too.”

When I attended a club training session last week, Dave Overton of the Bluegrass Cycling Club was teaching bicycle skills to a couple dozen kids, ages 6 to 14. Afterward, volunteers served them lunch, including a cake decorated with the club’s logo: a jockey riding a bicycle.

“It’s fun to just be able to go out and have fun and do what you like doing,” said Zion Alaboudi, 10, who can’t wait to get his new bike.

The club plans more sessions of classes, and members are considering ways kids could earn bicycles through good school attendance and academic performance. And the East End was a good place to start, but Walker wants the club to eventually have chapters in other neighborhoods citywide.

His larger goal is to get more people of all ages and races on bicycles and walking to improve their health and get to know their community better. Walker, an associate professor of English at UK, has been leading weekly rides for other faculty members on the Legacy Trail. And he is trying to get 100 families to ride bicycles in the annual Roots & Heritage Festival parade, Sept. 10 in the East End.

“This is how you grow it,” Walker said. “You start with kids this age.”

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On a rare warm day in February 2010, Steve Austin began a bicycle ride from his home in Ashland Park. He is almost finished with it.

Austin didn’t set out intending to ride all 416 miles of Lexington streets inside New Circle Road. But the more he rode that afternoon, the more he thought it wouldn’t be that hard.

“Finding the time and the right weather was my biggest challenge,” said Austin, a vice president at Blue Grass Community Foundation.

Austin rode mostly on Saturday and Sunday mornings, but occasionally during heavy weekday traffic, always starting from his home. With a yellow highlighter, he marked off each street on a well-folded city map, but he didn’t keep track of his total miles ridden. He has only a few streets left to go.

“I was really doing an experiment to see if Lexington is a bikeable city,” he said. “The answer is yes. We tell ourselves it’s not because of traffic, but inside New Circle Road is really compact, although it’s more hilly than it looks from a car.”

Austin, who was trained as a landscape architect and land-use lawyer and has spent much of his career as a city planner, said that viewing Lexington from the seat of a bicycle has given him a new perspective.

For one thing, he was impressed by how courteous drivers were to him. And he was struck by how nice Lexington’s older suburban neighborhoods are — even the less-affluent ones. “But we missed a lot of opportunities as we grew from the core by not building greenways along the creeks to connect them,” he said.

“You can live in a great suburb and still have to drive to everything,” he said. “Retro-fitting the urban fabric to make it more pedestrian- and bike-friendly is going to be one of our challenges over the next few decades” as gasoline prices rise and the population ages.

But that won’t be as difficult, or expensive, as it might sound. Austin discovered that New Circle Road is no more than a 30-minute bike ride from anywhere inside it, and the city is filled with lots of streets going the same direction.

“You can ride almost anywhere without getting on a busy road — a Nicholasville Road, a Richmond Road,” he said, adding that Liberty, Mason Headley and Parkers Mill roads can be just as treacherous.

Austin said small things could make a big difference, such as signs marking good bike routes and cut-throughs at key points — a bridge over the creek behind Lafayette High School, for example, or a pathway behind Picadome Golf Course — that would allow cyclists to avoid busy roads.

“Those are incremental costs compared to the benefits we would get for the city,” he said.

Such small improvements could encourage more bicycle commuters. The U.S. Census Bureau’s 2009 American Community Survey found that only about 1 percent of Lexington’s 143,000 commuters bike to work. “What would it take to get to 10 percent?” Austin wondered.

Austin now bikes to his downtown office several days a week, and he rides around his neighborhood some evenings with his son, who recently got a bicycle for his 9th birthday. Austin, who also has taken up jogging, said he has lost more than 20 pounds and is trying for more.

Austin said his journey also helped him notice things about Lexington that have nothing to do with biking — for example, how some of Lexington’s nicest neighborhoods are only a stone’s throw from some of its most dilapidated. “Yet we’ve kind of compart mentalized things,” he said. “We have mental blinders.”

Austin also noticed University of Kentucky flags on homes in almost every neighborhood. “It sounds kind of cliché, but UK athletics is the unifier, the common reference,” he said. It made him wonder: How powerful would it be if every Lexington child could attend a basketball game in Rupp Arena, if only once?

“I think it’s important for us to get to know our city better,” he said. “And you just don’t get it from the windshield of a car.”

Greenville Mayor Knox White, left, leads a group from Commerce Lexington across Falls Bridge, a suspension pedestrian bridge that replaced a highway bridge over a waterfall that has become a city park. Photo by Tom Eblen

One of the most valuable things about Commerce Lexington’s annual “leadership visit” is that it brings together nearly 200 people who spend three days looking at Lexington’s strengths and weaknesses through the lens of another city.

Last week’s trip to Greenville, S.C., was my fourth, and I found it the most useful. Perhaps that was because Greenville’s relative size, assets and challenges are more similar to Lexington’s than are those in Pittsburgh, Madison or Austin.

In many respects, Lexington is better than all of those cities. It was easy to sense some of Greenville’s shortcomings, despite city leaders’ positive spin. But the point of the trip was to learn from what they do better than we do.

The primary lesson was that beautiful, high-quality urban development can improve both quality of life and economic vitality. Since the 1970s, Greenville has transformed an ugly, car-choked downtown into a garden spot where people want to live, work and play. Economic prosperity has followed.

Greenville is more politically and socially conservative than Lexington, and much of what city leaders did was controversial. But they did it, and it worked.

The city transformed a Main Street the size of Lexington’s from a sun-baked, four-lane highway into a pleasant two-lane, two-way gathering place. It is shaded by big trees and filled with shops, restaurants, sidewalk dining and plenty of parking in diagonal street spaces and artfully disguised garages. A neglected riverfront and waterfall became a gorgeous public park surrounded by new development.

Downtown is now beautiful, inviting, unique to Greenville — and twice as big as it was. Old buildings have been restored and adapted to new uses. Contemporary mixed-use developments have been built and are successful. There are a variety of performance halls, sports venues and museums. The renaissance is growing in all directions, and nearby towns are emulating it.

What can Lexington learn from Greenville? Here were my takeaways:

■ Articulate a simple vision that almost everyone can embrace. That is different from launching a task force or commissioning a detailed study that will gather dust on a shelf. Simply agree on a vision such as this: Lexington’s urban and suburban spaces should be worthy of the beautifully unique countryside that surrounds them.

■ Leaders must lead. As the Lexingtonians saw in Greenville, that means taking risks, working together and figuring out creative ways to accomplish goals. It means entrepreneurial partnerships among government, business and nonprofits. It also means inclusive, transparent planning and long-term strategies.

■ Demand excellence. Greenville raised the bar for downtown development with design guidelines and an architectural review process. Developers know they must meet high standards — and that city officials will work with them to overcome obstacles to mutual success.

Remember when the developer who wanted to build a one-story, suburban-style CVS drugstore on Lexington’s Main Street said the retailer wouldn’t do better? Well, a two-story, urban-style CVS is under construction on Greenville’s Main Street. When finished, it will look like it has always been there.

I asked Mayor Knox White to explain Greenville’s redevelopment vision in a nutshell. “Downtown is all about the walking experience,” he said. “The architectural guidelines, the landscaping, everything. It’s a religion with us.”

■ Build on success. Greenville’s revitalization was an intentional, long-term process. Partnerships were formed to create world-class anchor projects and beautiful public spaces that would attract private investment around them. Civic leaders were not afraid to dream big and take risks.

Greenville leaders said they always have a “next big thing” on the horizon. Lexington achieved much during the three years before last fall’s Alltech FEI World Equestrian Games. We need a “next big thing” on which to focus.

This is a time of great opportunity for Lexington. Over the next couple of decades, Lexington will redevelop three huge tracts of urban land: the 46 acres around the Civic Center and Rupp Arena; the adjacent Distillery District; and the area surrounding the new Bluegrass Community and Technical College campus at the old Eastern State Hospital site.

Greenville shows what can be done, and the visitors from Lexington left talking like converts at a tent revival. But as we all know, even the most sincere believers can backslide when distracted.

Will Lexington stop being satisfied with good enough and try for great? Can those who went to Greenville help articulate a clear vision for Lexington and mobilize the community behind it? Will our leaders lead?

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This is the week each year when Commerce Lexington takes several dozen business and civic leaders to another city for three days of networking and brainstorming about how to improve Lexington.

Nearly 200 people are leaving on chartered jets Wednesday morning for Greenville, the largest city in the Upstate region of South Carolina. Although a much smaller city than Lexington, Greenville is the center of a metro area with 172,000 more people.

The annual “leadership visit” went to Greenville in 1995, but Commerce Lexington thought the city was worth a second look. Greenville has continued to prosper, thanks to smart economic development, good urban planning and successful public-private partnerships.

The city that once called itself “textile capital of the world” is now home to a mix of companies, many from Europe, including BMW and Michelin. A big part of Greenville’s strategy was revitalizing its urban core and improving the quality of life.

“They focused on what makes the city unique and special,” said Lexington Mayor Jim Gray, whose family-owned construction company helped build BMW’s facilities there. “It’s become a city that reaches out globally, not a big city but a city with a modern, cosmopolitan sense.”

Greenville’s downtown revitalization was sparked in the 1970s by a mayor who immigrated from Austria. He thought a beautiful, pedestrian-friendly European approach was a good antidote to the car-centric, asphalt-everywhere path that had contributed to urban decay.

That meant downsizing some streets, adding trees, restoring old buildings and removing a highway bridge over a neglected gulch of the Reedy River. The river was cleaned, the gulch transformed into a park and the four-lane bridge replaced by a unique pedestrian bridge.

“They have reclaimed that whole space, and it has had an amazing effect on the downtown,” said Jeanne Gang, the renowned Chicago architect whom Dudley Webb recently hired to redesign the stalled CentrePointe project in downtown Lexington. “They have an amazing set of beautiful urban elements that they’ve done over time.”

Gang’s firm, Studio Gang Architects, is completing designs for two signature projects in Greenville: Reedy Square and the Blue Wall Center.

Reedy Square will be the “town square” that Greenville hasn’t had, plus a showcase for regional attractions and culture. “It’s both a place for the locals to go hang out and a place that turns visitors on to what all there is to do in the Upstate,” Gang said.

Blue Wall Center, a 175-acre area at the foot of the Blue Ridge Mountains, will have a visitors center, gardens and trails for people to get a taste of the local mountains. “We’ve been calling it speed-dating with nature,” Gang said. “It’s both a landscape and a building that work together to be this kind of visitor destination.”

Lexington can learn some things from Greenville, but how much of that learning will be converted into action? That is a frequent criticism of these trips — at least by people who don’t go on them.

Commerce Lexington President Bob Quick said there has been action. For example, Lexington’s Thursday Night Live and Minority Business Development programs began with ideas from the 1995 Greenville trip. “Sometimes it takes years for things to come together,” he said.

Last year, Commerce Lexington went to Pittsburgh with Greater Louisville Inc. The most popular idea from Pittsburgh — replicating Bill Strickland’s Manchester Bidwell program for inspiring and teaching job skills to young people — has been stalled by the weak economy, Quick said.

But many of Manchester Bidwell’s concepts will be used in the Fayette County Public Schools’ new agri-science vocational program, which begins this fall on Leestown Road. “Some of the things that we’re going to be doing are very similar to what Strickland is doing,” outgoing Superintendent Stu Silberman said.

Quick said the biggest benefit from last year’s trip has been stronger relationships among leaders in Lexington and Louisville, which has led to more cooperation on common issues and economic development initiatives.

Networking is always the biggest benefit of these trips. Sometimes it takes getting away from work and the patterns of everyday life to build new relationships that will help turn good ideas into successful action.

Follow the trip on Twitter

I will be posting updates from the trip on Twitter. Follow me here.

Last year’s popular Second Sunday event at Blue Grass Airport will be repeated this weekend. People are invited to bring their bicycles, skateboards, rollerskates, sports equipment and walking shoes to have fun and get some exercise on the airport’s 4,000-foot runway Sunday from 1 p.m. until 5 p.m.

The free event will offer a number of activities, including a batting cage from the Lexington Legends, sports equipment from the YMCA and a display of various aircraft and safety vehicles, including fire engines, police vehicles, helicopters and unusual airplanes.

Participants can register to win tickets to one of three Florida destinations, courtesy of the airport and Allegiant Air. They also can bring picnics to enjoy while watching aircraft take off and land. During the event, aircraft will be using the airport’s main 7,000-foot runway, so there will be no interruption in flights.

Second Sunday participants should plan to enter the airport grounds from Versailles Road, near the Fire Training Center across from Keeneland Race Course. Parking will be adjacent to the runway. Leashed pets are welcome.

Second Sunday offers monthly events in Lexington and annual events statewide to encourage all forms of physical activity and fitness. Last year, 115 counties participated in the annual Second Sunday program in October, in which a section of road was closed in each county for the afternoon so people could use it for exercise and recreation.

Click here to see reports from last year’s event, which was a lot of fun.

Central Kentucky has more public art than most people realize, from edgy new murals and sculpture to historical architecture that has become so much a part of the landscape that we take it for granted.

Finding and learning more about this art has never been easier, thanks to a new, free tool that is as close as the palm of your hand.

The Kentucky Museum Without Walls project will soon release an Android version of its TakeItArtside! application, which was launched in November for Apple’s iPhone, iPad and iTouch.

The app is the brainchild of faculty and students at the University of Kentucky’s Art Department and Gaines Center for the Humanities and was developed by Lexington’s APAX Software. You may download it free from Apple’s App Store or the project’s Web site, Kentuckymuseumwithoutwalls.com.

The application uses GPS mapping technology to direct users to art in public places in Fayette and surrounding counties. There is a photograph of and information about each piece. Users may search for public art in the region and make a gallery of favorites.

But that is just the beginning, said Christine Huskisson, the project’s co-founder and a part-time UK art professor. “It has the ability to engage people in public art who haven’t been engaged before,” she said.

Users may send feedback and information to project developers, such as whether a piece of art has been vandalized. Soon, they will be able to add additional artwork to the database, along with photographs and background information.

“We’re using the community to help us build the content,” Huskisson said, adding that submitted information will be edited and verified by project volunteers.

Interdisciplinary lesson plans for middle school and high school students are available on the app and the Web site, and discussions are under way about using them in local school systems. The app also has a calendar of events.

The app will soon launch an interactive game — ArtFit — that will help users count calories they burn while walking to visit artwork. Streaming video interviews with local artists will be added soon.

Eventually, Huskisson said, the project hopes to grow into its name and expand statewide, perhaps with help from UK’s network of county extension agents.

Georgetown College, where art department chair Juilee Decker has been active in public art projects, has joined as a partner in the Kentucky Museum Without Walls. Discussions are under way to bring in Transylvania University, too.

“It kind of has this life of its own,” Huskisson said. The collaborative nature of the project has allowed it to come a long way in less than a year. It recently won a regional award from the Association for Continuing Higher Education.

The project began when Marnie Holoubek asked Huskisson and her museum-studies students to help develop a public-art master plan for the Legacy Trail. As that project progressed, ambitions grew.

Huskisson discovered that Lisa Broome-Price, associate director of the Gaines Center, wanted to create a public-art database for the region. After receiving a $10,000 Commonwealth Collaborative grant from UK to develop their vision, they attended a professional conference in Baltimore and were inspired by mobile apps in New York and Portland, Ore., and an online public-art database in Philadelphia.

They and their students visualized the user experience — including games and lesson plans — and APAX Software figured out how to turn it into reality. Subsequent funding has come from the Gaines Center and private donations.

UK and Georgetown College students have collected information about artwork for the database — taking photos, writing descriptions and plotting GPS locations. The process has led to some interesting discussions about what is public art.

Huskisson said TakeItArtside! is including any painting, sculpture, mural or other work that is outside or in a building accessible to the general public. But project leaders are taking a broad view. Many historical homes were added to the database because they are architectural works of art, Broome-Price said.

By increasing awareness of public art, the project hopes to develop more appreciation for the art Kentucky has — and an appetite to create more.

“It’s about cultural assets in public places,” Huskisson said. “And we have a lot more of them than many people realize.”

It is Monday afternoon as I write this, and outside my office window, Lexington looks like a giant snow globe. Fat flakes are pounding the icy pavement, and all I can think about is how much I want it to warm up so I can ride my bike again.

Spring will come eventually. When it does, Lexington will be an even better place for bicycling, thanks to many people’s hard work.

The Fayette County Public Schools was awarded a $20,775 grant last month from the Kentucky Bicycle and Bikeway Commission to expand its bike-safety program. The money came from voluntary fees paid by people buying “Share the Road” license plates.

Last year, many of the school system’s physical education teachers were trained by certified instructors from the League of American Bicyclists. The next phase of the program includes purchasing 70 more bikes and helmets to teach all third-, fourth- and fifth-graders how to safely ride a bike.

City officials recently finished “complete streets” guidelines for adding bike lanes, whenever possible, to new and renovated streets and roads, said Kenzie Gleason, Lexington’s bike/pedestrian coordinator.

Lexington has 25 miles of bike lanes, including recent additions to South Limestone, Vine Street, Polo Club Boulevard, Todds Road and the Newtown Pike extension. An additional 15 miles have been funded. Those bike lanes will be added as part of improvements to Maxwell Street and Clays Mill Road this year, and to Southland Drive next year.

Lexington also now has 22 miles of bike/walking trails, including the new Legacy Trail. Six more miles of trails have been funded and are in development. Twenty more miles are being studied or designed but are not funded.

The Legacy Trail’s initial eight-mile section, from the YMCA on Loudon Avenue to the Kentucky Horse Park, has been popular since it opened in September. When it has been too icy or snowy for bikes, friends tell me they have seen people cross-country skiing there.

An extension of the trail from the YMCA to the proposed Isaac Murphy Memorial Art Garden at East Third Street and Midland Avenue has been delayed until completion of an archaeological survey. Organizers always knew the great 19th-century African-American jockey’s home was near the garden; now they think he might have lived on that very spot.

Two couples from Scott County — Dick and Christie Robinson and Keith and Leslie Flanders — are soliciting support to extend the Legacy Trail from the Horse Park to the Cincinnati Bengals’ training center in Georgetown. The distance is less than most people might think: about three miles. But it would make this the Bluegrass’s first multicounty trail.

Bluegrass Tomorrow also is pushing the idea of a regional trail system. Chairman Blaine Early said the non-profit “smart growth” group hopes to facilitate plans among its 18 counties to build new trails and connect with those that exist elsewhere, including Lexington and Versailles.

Meanwhile, The Fayette Alliance has asked Vice Mayor Linda Gorton to appoint a Bike Trails Task Force to bring stakeholders together to figure out how to design and finance recreational trails throughout Fayette County.

An extensive trail system could be “an extraordinary economic development, quality-of-life, tourism and transportation tool for our city and state,” said Knox van Nagell, director of the land-use advocacy group.

“I’m super-excited about this,” said Gorton, who expects to appoint the task force by the end of February.

But one thing Lexington won’t see soon is another public bike-sharing program downtown. Last year, the city received a $175,000 federal grant that officials hoped to use for an automatic kiosk system to replace the Yellow Bike program that was launched in 2008 but was abandoned last year.

“The more we learned about bike-sharing systems, it was obvious that that amount of money was not going to cover the equipment and ongoing operations,” Gleason said. More study is needed to develop a plan to make such a program pay for itself after creation.

Instead, Gleason said, the grant will be used to install sensors to detect cyclists and trigger traffic signals at key intersections around town. That would be helpful because most current sensors were designed for big motor vehicles and don’t notice a bicycle. Cyclists gripe about that almost as much as they do about snow and ice.

Town Branch Trail organizers are inviting the public to come out to Trailapalooza on Sunday, 1 p.m. to 5 p.m. The celebration will be held along the 1.8 miles of completed trail that extends from Leestown Road to Alexandria Drive west of downtown.

Trailapalooza will include live music, refreshments and a scavenger hunt. People (mainly kids) will be given a “passport” with questions about history and the environment along the new biking and walking trail. They will find answers to those questions on signs and markers along the trail. Prizes include a $200 gift certificate to Pedal Power bike shop, a $100 gift certificate to Phillip Gall’s outdoor store and memberships to Urban Active gym.

Eventually, the trail will run eight miles along Town Branch Creek from Leestown Road to Manchester Street downtown. Funding has been secured and design is under way for another 1.5-mile section of the trail. That section will connect McConnell Springs, the site where Lexington was founded, with the new Distillery District arts and entertainment area along Manchester Street near Rupp Arena.

Progress has been slower on Town Branch Trail than the 9-mile Legacy Trail, which is nearing completion between downtown’s East End and the Kentucky Horse Park. Part of the reason is that property issues are much more complicated along Town Branch, much of which has been developed property for two centuries. “Some of the industrial property inside New Circle Road is a puzzle,” Town Branch Trail President Van Meter Pettit says. “It just takes a lot of time to sort out.”

Speaking of the Legacy Trail, mark your calendar for its grand opening celebration, Sunday afternoon, Sept. 12.

Several thousand people came out June 13 for the Second Sunday event at Blue Grass Airport. The almost-finished new runway was opened to bikers, rollerbladers, skateboarders and walkers. It was a great community event to encourage people to get outside and exercise

In case you missed it, organizers commissioned the video below. For more information about other Second Sunday events, go to the website.

What’s a little heat and humidity when you have a chance to play on an airport runway?  That’s what more than 2,500 people seemed to think this afternoon when they came out to Second Sunday to bike, skate, walk and run down Blue Grass Airport’s nearly finished 4,000-foot runway.

Some, like me, rode out from home on their bikes. Most drove out, filling the main 1,200-spot parking lot. Others were sent to an overflow lot and were shuttled in on LexTran buses. There was plenty of water to drink and several interesting old planes from the Aviation Museum of Kentucky and airport emergency vehicles to see. Plus, you could watch planes take off and land on the airport’s main runway nearby.

(LexTran boss Rocky Burke was there on his bike. I also saw Urban County Councilman Jay McChord, one of the organizers of Second Sunday, and Council at-Large candidate Steve Kay.  Kentucky Chamber of Commerce President David Adkisson was there on a bike with his three grandchildren, one of whom he was pulling in a little trailer.)

It was a great family outing, and a fun way to get some exercise. That’s the whole point of Second Sunday.

Click on each thumbnail to see complete photo:

I was in college before I took my first airplane trip, so when I was a kid, there was always something magical about flight.

My father would occasionally take me to what was then called Blue Grass Field to watch airplanes come and go. And the whole family would go out to see him off to his annual convention of college bookstore managers.

As Dad’s plane would roll down the runway, faster and faster until finally taking flight, I would wave and wonder: If I could pedal my bicycle fast enough down that runway, would I take off, too?

I have learned enough about aerodynamics since then to know it is highly improbable. Still, on Sunday afternoon, I plan to give it a try. You should, too.

From 2 to 5 p.m. Sunday, Blue Grass Airport will open its nearly completed 4,000-foot runway, which is 75 feet wide, and the parallel taxiway, which is 35 feet wide, for people to bike, skate, walk or run on.

Some of the fresh pavement will be reserved for chalk drawings. Big chalk drawings.

Families are encouraged to bring lawn chairs and picnics and watch at least 15 scheduled commercial flights come and go on the airport’s 7,000-foot main runway nearby. Fire trucks and a police helicopter will be on display. You can bring leashed pets, balls and Frisbees, but no kites.

The free event, dreamed up by Urban County Councilman Jay McChord and the airport’s executive director, Eric Frankl, reminds me of the Blue Grass Field community days that I went to as a kid. But this is the first time the airport has ever let the public play on a runway.

“It should be a lot of fun,” Frankl said. “It will allow people to check out the airport from a different perspective.”

This is part of the Second Sunday series of monthly events throughout Kentucky designed to get average people outdoors and exercising.

Like me, McChord has fond boyhood memories of going out to the airport to watch airplanes come and go. But Second Sunday isn’t so much about nostalgia as about dealing with Kentucky’s modern problems. We eat too much and exercise too little, helping to make Kentucky first in the nation in cancer, No. 3 in heart disease and smoking, and No. 9 in premature deaths of all kinds.

Usually, Second Sunday involves closing a street to cars for a few hours, or having a monthly family bike ride escorted by police. Those rides are much like the recent 10-mile tour through downtown and the University of Kentucky campus that attracted more than 2,500 people of all ages during Bike Lexington on Memorial Day.

The statewide Second Sunday event this year will be Oct. 10 — 10-10-10, for those who pay attention to calendar symbolism. Simultaneous street closings are planned throughout Kentucky to encourage people to take to the pavement and move.

Seventy counties participated in the inaugural Second Sunday, in October 2008; last year, 107 counties participated. Diana Doggett, a Fayette County extension agent and statewide coordinator for Second Sunday, hopes to get all 120 counties involved this year.

Lexington’s plans are still being developed. If you live in another county, ask your extension agent about local plans.

No matter where you live, you are welcome to come out Sunday to Blue Grass Airport. Parking will be available next to the runway. Vehicles should enter near the airport’s rescue training center on Versailles Road, just west of Keeneland. If parking fills up, LexTran will provide shuttles to and from an overflow location, and Pedal Power bike shop will provide bike shuttles.

Based on the crowd at Bike Lexington, Frankl expects several thousand people to come out to the airport Sunday, if the weather is nice, to play on the $27 million runway before it opens to aircraft.

“Obviously,” he said, “this is a unique event.”